Hi from Scotland
 

Hi everyone, ive been lurking and reading for a while now so decided to join and tell you a little about myself.

Im in my forties now and have had a few diferent jobs in my time mostly in electrical, electronic and nechanical engineering but am more management now.

I started making biodiesel about ten years ago with a proper processor which I built myself, I find it hard to get veg oil now so rairly get to make any.

I built an electric trike when I was 12 from bicycles parts a car starter motor and battery and its taken me until now to decide to do the real thing. Im planning to convert a Mazda RX8 to electric power and have designed and started building an axial brushless motor to power it. It was the motor controllers threads that drew me to this forum so here I am.

nice to meet you all
Ian

welcome

Impressive background, you're building your own motor, even more impressive.

Welcome

regards
mech

Start up a build thread on the electric mazda and the motor... as you know there are a bunch of folks here with experience in that and they'd surely take an interest. Welcome!

Welcome to the site

Very impressive project.:thumbup:

Thanks for the warm welcome guys

Welcome!

Why has veggie oil become scarce?

Had a lot of trouble with the oil collection companies poaching my suppliers.
They lie to them saying that it is illegal to give there oil to me or threaten to blacklist them and say if I don't turn up one week then they won't be able to get anyone else to collect there oil. Some of them are actually part of the oil supply companies and they say they will charge a highrler price if they don't collect the used oil too.

I have tried paying a little for the oil but they always start to get greasy, they look at eBay and expect me to pay about £0.80 litre for a tub of solid fats and water.

There is also a few guys collecting just to sell on eBay which really annoys me.

I once spoke to a local guy with a waste veggie oil conversion, and asked him off-hand (strictly out of curiosity) where he got his oil. He was so afraid of poaching, he wouldn't tell me!

Welcome! Very cool conversion you are doing. The rx8 iis a perfect car to convert. Are you going to use the original trans and rear end? Good luck!

My plan is to mount the motor directly onto the rear diff doing away with the transmission, prop and the torque beam that runs along side it. That should save a fair bit of weight along with the engine. My motor should only weigh about 30 to 35 kgs leaving plenty of room for batteries which I plan to cram into all the spaces where the ice stuff went before.

I have the car and almost everything I need for the motor apart from the magnets (most important but most expensive part) should have enough funds for everything except the batteries but I'll deal with that problem when I get there.

Have you never considered to use some animal fats to make biodiesel, or at least to blend it with the veg oils?

I did use a bit of solid fats in the summer but living in Scotland the temperature gets too low the rest of the year. I had frost on my car this morning which I didne expect and could have had blocked fuel lines if I had bio from animal fats in the tank.

I did try using various additives and used to have a row of jars of my bio sitting on a wall on my garden as an early warning system.

Have you ever used turpentine as an anti-freezing additive for biodiesel?

Turpentine was used to thin down veg oil in the early days but is illegal in the UK to use as a road fuel. It doesn't do much to help the freezing point of biodiesel from what I've heard but I haven't tried it myself. I have tried a couple of the purpose made additives which do work quite well although they are expensive